The works of mercy in Italian medieval art (c.1050-c.1400)

Abstract

This is the first monograph on the medieval Italian representations of the corporal and spiritual Works of Mercy, the fourteen basic categories of almsdeeds conceived by the scholastics. This is a genuinely interdisciplinary study: Federico Botana has painstakingly dissected frescoes, panel paintings, miniatures, and sculptures of the Works of Mercy to shed new light on fundamental aspects of medieval society. These depictions reveal how communities took care of their needy, in some instances beyond what can be gleaned in written sources. Most of all, they contribute to our understanding of medieval confraternal piety. For Church reformers and the Mendicant Orders, the "works of mercy" served to rally Christians against heresy.